Oliver

The Farmer

William Henry Oliver

William Henry Oliver was among the most difficult subjects to research. Until very recently, all I had been able to learn about him came from a few census records, a brief mention in Memorial and Biographical History of the Coast Counties of Central California (1893), a marriage license record, and a mention about his estate in the Court Notes section of the Santa Cruz Evening News.

As blind luck would have it, a few days ago while looking for something else in my father's garage, I discovered a envelope of essays written by Irwin Addicott. I have converted the narrative to digital form using optical character recognition software. The technology is far from perfect. Much editing was required. I have chosen not to correct Edwin's original errors (other than spacing) in order to preserve his voice. Edwin was a very successful academic. I assume that he was able to produce these four pages of narrative much faster than I was able to transcribe it to digital form. The snapshot Irwin mentions is lost. It is my hope that one of my cousins has a copy of it and will forward it to me for inclusion in these pages.

My small Christmas remembrance to you this year,(1970), is the enclosed snapshot reproduction picture of our maternal grandfather, William H. (Henry)Oliver. I ran across the original recently, while thumbing through an old album of photos, and thought that you (and perhaps some of your children and even grandchildren) might be interested in having a copy. To the best of my knowledge it is the only "portrait” picture of him in existence, except one taken of him at the time he was married, when none of us knew him. This picture was taken I am certain at Mt. Herman about 1909 or 1910 when he and Grandmother "Mamie" were camping on some of our father’s land there, that later became the Rugh property, before Grandfather built a summer place for himself.

From Memorial and Biographical History of the Coast Counties of Central California (con't. below).

William H. Oliver was born in Bath, Maine in 1840, and grew to young manhood there. His father, Benjamin Oliver, was a sailing vessel captain and later a ship builder in Bath. William attended school through the academy in Bath and was a member of the big 2nd Congregational Church, an almost vast frame structure which I have visited. He attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, a college for men established in 1794. Just how long he attended college we do not know. He was apparently according to family letters I have, a premedical student there, in the Department of Medicine, during his early 20s. He quit college and in company with some of his brothers, and other young men from Bath, migrated to California to "seek his fortune" (and perhaps to escape being drafted for service during the Civil War). For a period of time before, or right after attending college, he had served as a seaman on a ship that plyed the waters of the eastern seaboard from Hew England to at least New Orleans. Two of his brothers became seacaptains, but William, while he enjoyed the seacoast, apparently did not wish to follow in his father’s occupation. Sailing to Panama, he crossed the isthumus on foot, and took ship to San Francisco. Here the group of young Bath men were met by a former Bath man, Captain Merritt, for whom Oakland’s Lake Merritt is named. This man had some time before apparently been given a tremendous grant of land in what is now the city of Oakland, by the Mexican goverment before it became American territory. Merritt offered to sell these young men each any reasonable amount of land they wished to farm, at $1.50 per acre, according to what Grandfather once told me. Only one man took up the offer, and became the only wealthy man in the group I have been told. He stayed in San Francisco and became one of the early editors of the San Francisco Chronicle. He used to visit Grandfather Oliver when I was a very small boy, and I met him several times, but his name now escapes me. Most of the young men from Bath, including W.H. Oliver, decided that the price of Merritt’s land was too high, when land could still be secured free of charge in many places by the process of homesteading. Oliver moved to San Jose, and homesteaded a piece of land there in Berryessa, just outside of the city. He worked for wages for established farmers in the area to earn money, while farming his own land also.

Will’s older sister, Harriet, had in the meantime married Phillip Henry, who had moved to Hollister, and homesteaded just north of the town. Henry was loud in his praise of the new area and community, so after a couple of years, Will gave up his Berryessa homestead and contracted for land about 5 miles south of Hollister on the old Tres Pinos road. This later became Southern Pacific land given them by the government, but rather than move again, Will paid the S.P. what they wanted for the land and stayed. Many of his neighbors gave up their land rather than to pay for it twice and moved away. He was therefore one of the old time settlers in that vicinity. He lived as a bachelor for a number of years, building a fair sized house, large horse barns and put in a family orchard. He kept adding to his land as he could afford to do so, until at one time he owned well over 1000 acres, and he rented and farmed considerably more land than he owned. His principal crops were wheat, oats and barley. While he was primarily a hay and grain farmer, he also raised considerable cattle and bred Morgan horses, and at one time had a dairy herd and sold cream for butter fat in Hollister. Together, he and his brother-in-law owned and operated a combined grain harvester, the only one in the Tres Pinos-Hollister-Gilroy area. This rig was powered by 50 horses at a time. One group of 50 horses was used in the mornings and a fresh group of 50 in the afternoons. This is why both the Oliver and Henry ranches had huge horse barns. Will was the "business manager" of the harvesting business, soliciting business, keeping books etc as his main part of the partnership, while Phil usually operated the rig and bossed the crew. I recall this harvester because I am probably the only Oliver grandchild whoa actually stayed at the Hollister ranch when very small when grandfather operated it "between renters", before he moved permanently to Pacific Grave. I recall I was very much impressed with this machine, its size and complexity, and the largo number of horses required for its operation.

Edith Bernice Oliver about age six

In 1873 when Will Oliver was 33 years of ago, a new Methodist minister was assigned to the church in Hollister. As there was no Congregational church in Hollister/Will and his sister Harriet and his brother-in-law, Phil and Will’s brother Frank Oliver who had in the mean time become a wholesale meat man there, attended the Methodist church. A beautiful and talented young lady, Luella Dryden, the oldest daughter of the now minister, sang in the choir when she was home from her position as a teacher of music at Napa Collegiate Institute. A romance quickly developed, and the two were married November 30, 1876 in Gilroy, which was then the Dryden home. There followed happy years of ranch life, and the coming of two little girls into the new family, Ruth and Bernice.

Oliver had given a two acre piece of land on the north east corner of his property as a school site. Here the Enterprise School was built, which Ruth and Bernice and five other neighbor children attended. Will was clerk of the board of trustees. The old school house still stands, and was used for a school until about 5 years ago, when there was consolidation with the Hollister Schools. When the girls had finished the eighth grade at Enterprise School, as there was at the time no academy or other secondary school in Hollister, Will rented his ranch and the family moved for the time being to San Jose, where the girls entered the San Jose Normal Training School, and later enrolled in the Normal School itself. Here while in her normal senior year (2nd year at the time) James Addicott, then a teacher in the Normal School, met Ruth Oliver a student in one of his classes, courted her, and upon her graduation, they were married. After the younger daughter Bernice, graduated from the Normal, instead of returning permanently to the ranch the Olivers decided to move to a house they had purchased at 121 9th Street Pacific Grove, and again rent the ranch. This is where most of the grandchildren visited or lived more permanently from time to time with Grandfather Oliver and "Mamie”, as we all called her. Here Will Oliver purchased a good many lots, especially in the business districts, built stores on them and rented them. He was always optimistic that Monterey Peninsula property would soon become quite valuable.This did happen eventually, but not during his lifetime, for as soon as property went up in value, the Del Monte Properties Company flooded the market with newly created subdivisions in the 17 Mile Drive area.

Grandfather Oliver, as I recall him from the three rather lengthy periods I lived with him and Mamie (1st, 2nd, and 6th grades) in Pacific Grove, and as I visited them later, was a reserved, almost shy, but kindly man. He was far from "dour”, but because of his New England reserve, (he was never the "hail-fellow-well-met” type) people I am sure thought him to be almost unfriendly, at times. At least as I lived in his home, I recall him as being very friendly with those who called, though I do not recall going with him to make a strictly friendly call, though I went often with him on business calls, to collect rents, arrange for repairs to property etc', or on calls to his relatives. He had a brother who was in business in Pacific Grove. His business occupied one of Grandfather’s stores and was a leading meat market and later grocery. We often visited "Uncle Frank” in his home also. He also had a brother Lendell, a retired sea captain, who lived in a large house in Salinas, and was engaged in truck farming. This man was even more reserved than Will, and was considered by some to be almost a recluse, I gather. Will Oliver always dressed very formally. I seldom recall seeing him in anything but a white “boiled” starched shirt, tie and coat. His reserve stands out in the picture. Note the jewelled stickpin in his tie, the wide lapels of the coat and the wide tie. (Like current styles) He was least reserved around his sister Harriet and her husband, as I recall it. She was a small and very friendly lady and there was a semblance of informality in the relations between Will and this sister. One of his brothers Augustus, was at times County Superintendent of Schools and later Superior Judge in Alameda County

Ruth Oliver age nine

Grandfather Oliver loved to walk. It was his favorite form of exercise. He would often take me with him as ho walked to the old Monterey wharf, where he would visit with the sailors on the sailing ships which at that time took crude oil from the Associated Oil tank farms below the Presidio at Monterey to the Orient. As steamtankers took over, He visited with the crews of these ships also as well as those on fishing vessels. Sometimes we would even go out on the coastal steamers tied up at the wharf. He liked smoked fish, probably a “throwback” from his youthful days in Maine, and used to buy half of a smoked salmon or half a dozen smoked herring at 10¢ a pound and more occasionally a whole fresh salmon on the wharf for a total price of 10¢. Together we used to comb the piny woods of the peninsula at Christmas for just the right small pine for a Christmas tree to be placed in the bay window at the front of the living room at 121 9th street. In the spring we would walk the shoreline fields near Cabrillo Point to gather young wild mustard and dock for fresh greens, and later in the spring would look for wild strawberries in the woods. Early summer brought the blackberry season, and expeditions by horse and surry to the hillsides along the Monterey-Salinas road for wild blackberries and later for huckleberries back of the Presidio in the woods. Soon we would be enjoying Grandfather’s wild blackberry jelly, one of the few things he liked to cook. His horses (he never owned an automobile), had to be exercised daily, so often Grandfather and Mamie would call for me at the school when my session was over, and we would drive around the 17 Mile Drive before supper, (the main meal was always at noon), enjoying the high breakers and watching the sealions at play, while my fox terrier dog “Teddy”, chased ground squirrels. I shall never forget the time he caught a skunk and couldn’t understand why we would not let him ride home with us in the surry as usual that day!! Often on these drives we saw a peculiar animal, the result of the crossbreeding of cattle and the American buffalo, we were told this project was the brain child of some executive of the Del Monte Properties Company who thought a much hardier and prolific meat animal would be the result. The experiment didn’t last long!

Grandfather would try to do almost anything I would ask him to do within reason. He carried bits of broken glass in his thumb for years as a result of my request that he get the top off of a given bottle when I was a very small boy in San Jose. He tried!! He picked up a piece of lumber on one of our walks out at Jog’spoint, a part of the wreck of the old passenger steamer St. Paul. My insisted that grandfather draw fro me on the light colored wood the picture of the four masted sailing vessel he shipped on as a young man. He tried and the result was for years one of my dearest possessions as a child! I wanted to build for myself a wagon for to coast down the hill to 9th street. I couldn’t make the wheels, but Grandfather worked for hours sawing “wheels” out of rounds of Cyprus limbs, and boring holes in those rounds for the axles. He tried, but gave up, and I was soon the proud owner of a commercially made coaster wagon!! (And complete with handbrake!!) Grandfather, like the writer, was Not a mechanical genius!!

One of my outstanding memories of this kindly, reserved man, was a camping trip by horse and surry (yes, it had a fringe on top!)carrying tent and all our gear in the back seat, including tent and kettles etc, as well as bedding (no sleeping bags in those days). We went to the then new National Monument(Pinnacles) via the Salinas Valley. It was a big job for Grandfather to put up each night the big 6x3 sidewalled tent and stove (no open fires for him!), and there were several nights on the road as we could only drive about 40 miles each day. How thrilled I was with the brightly colored Pinnacles, and the supper of young cotton tail rabbit he shot and cooked for us! And how angry I recall he was, when arriving at one of the mile apart combined horse troughs and road sprinkling water tanks, on a hot day, to find the trough occupied by a tramp, taking his ease in the nude in the cool and soapy water!! Quite often we would drive from Pacific Grove to Hollister, rising long before dawn to get started and arriving well after dark. We went via the old original stage road from Salinas over the original-San Juan Grade. We had to walk up much of the grade as the horse couldn’t pull the loaded surrey plus its passengers up the steep grades. That old dirt surfaced road still exists, to serve some remote cattle ranches, and Astrid and I drove over it in 1966!! It affords some superb views of the Ferry-Morse Seed Co. flowers in bloom in season, now as then. While in Hollister Grandfather would drive out to his ranch to check up on its operation. He stayed usually with his sister Harriet and her husband, Phil, but occasionally with the Will Johnson’s. It was here that I first tasted muscat grapes for Uncle Phil had a small home vinyard. I thought these grapes were “ambrosia”. Sometimes we would travel to Hollister via the S.P.railroad. This also took almost a full day, as we changed trains both in Castroville and again in Gilroy, with long waits between connections. From Gilroy we always rode in a mixed freight and passenger train which started and arrived on no scheduled time. There was one green plush seated passenger car attached to the end of the freight train. It was heated with a cole stove at on end and a kerosene lamps hanging from the ceiling lit it after dark. But we always got there!!

Grandfather Oliver was a well educated, intelligent, cultured man, He was an avid newspaper reader, He subscribed and read thoroughly each month two rather liberal (for those days) magazines of political and economic opinion, the INDEPENDENT and the OUTLOOK. He was a life long Republican, and a great admirer of both Theodore Roosevelt and Hiram Johnson. He read rapidly and almost continuously, especially history, biography and geography. He was one of the "best customers” of the Pacific Grove Carnegie Free Library. In the evenings, we three (Grandfather, Mamie and l) would sit around the big table in the kitchen-dining room, lit by the big round wicked "Rochester” lamp. Mamie would sew or mend, while Grandfather, who had a good reading voice would road aloud to us from such works as STODDARDS LECTURES, a set of travelogue books well illustrated with documentary photos and with very descriptive text, covering remote and exotic parts of the world. These thrilled mo to the core causedmo tohope at the time that I might someday see some of those far flung places in the world. But Grandfather warned mo not to do so via the route of becoming a sailor. The roughness of the life of a sailor had apparently been distasteful to him, and he would tell me many of the more difficult and dangerous phases of such a life. I am sure he was trying to discourage me from following the sea. (Which was not too difficult to do by the way).

Grandfather Oliver, was to my mind, a good Christian, but not a good churchman. When in Oakland visiting us he would attend the First Congregational Church of Oakland regularly each Sunday he was there, to hear the distinguished minister Dr. Charles R. Brown, who later became the Dean of the School of Religion at Yale Divinity School.Grandfather could not stand the emotional rantings of many, if not most of the non-intellectual fundamentalist preachers who often filled the pulpits of the small towns in which it was his lot to live much of his life. I am also certain that the treatment of his father-in-law by the hierarchy of the Methodist Church in the 1870’s also had a deep impact upon his attitudes toward the church, except for the more liberal ones. He read the monthly house organ of the California Congregational Conference regularly as did Mamie, as it contained many stimulating articles. When he and his wife were for some time in Topeka, Kansas, before and following the birth of Fred Hasty, his youngest Grandchild, it is reported that again he regularly attended church at least once and sometimes twice a Sunday to hear the distingushed preacher Charles Sheldon, the pastor of the Congregational Church there, and the author of the perennial best selling book, IN HIS STEPS. (It is still a best seller and available in paper back form.) It is a shame that Grandfather did not or could not finish his collegiate and professional education. He was a very successful farmer and businessman, apparently, and is written up in the official histories of both San Benito and Monterey Counties as one of the early successful leaders, but I have always felt that he felt that his life was in large part unfulfilled, he would have made great physician or college teacher or lawyer in my estimation.

A couple of other memories about Grandfather come back to me at the moment. Perhaps others will come back to Helen, Edwin or Hazel, and can be added to my memories. One was at a time when Helen, as a very small girl returned from a winter with our parents in Hew York City where Dad was attending Columbia University. Helen had been exposed to much snow back there and apparently liked to make snowballs. On a ride by horse and surrey out by Asilomar, among the sand dunes, Helen asked Grandfather to stop the horse so she could go and make snowballs out of the "beautiful white snow”(sand dunes). In vain Grandfather told her this was sand and not snow, he finally stopped, Helen rushed to the sand dune closest, lifted a large amount in her little hands, and to her utter amazement, it sifted right through her fingers! She was a crestfallen little girl and as she returned to the surrey, Sadder but wiser. Grandfather said as he started up the horse again, “I told you it wasn’t snow”.

Luella Oliver Summer 1907 or 1908. Photo taken in Saluda South Carolina where James worked in a Summer Program

Edwin and I visited our grandparents one time in December when the surf was and was very high. We came alone on the train. We asked to go down to the shore before changing our travel clothes. This was allowed, but we were told not to leave the flat ground and keep off of the rocks. This we did but the surf was so high a sudden wave drenched us wile standing on the turf. We ran home and were chided by Grandfather for disobeying. He just had to go down to see where we were standing when drenched. He stood in the same spot and was himself promptly drenched and we heard no more about the matter!!

William and Luella's Headstone El Carmelo Cemetery Pacific Grove, California

Grandfather died in his sleep in the old family home in Pacific Grove in July 1917, following a series of strokes.

Irwin Oliver Addicott
Fresno, California
December 7, 1970

The only other information I have to offer is more supposition than history. Irwin's essay does not speak of William's early travels to Nevada. The Coast Counties history does state that he initially went to the Humboldt County mines for six months. It is clear that William's brother Augustus was in that area at the same time (1861). Augustus and his companions travels are well documented. One of those companions was a very notable person. It does not seem like too much of a reach to assume that William met up with his brother in 1861 while in Humboldt County. And, it seems possible (if not probable) that William would have met Samuel Clemons.